


copper and axinite

by kwritten



Series: Sister Witches [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe- Witches, F/F, Female-Centric, Femslash, Femslash Big Bang Monthly Challenge, Sisters, Witches, ace stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3653448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>set a few years before the events of destiny came a calling; <br/>Allison thinks she'll never find her familiar... Lydia always knew that she was different from her family and friends, she just didn't know how much...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. summer (earth)

She found her familiar when she was seventeen – two summers after her grandmother finally succumbed to illness and left them on their own. Five years after giving up hope that she would ever be granted a familiar.

Even without her predisposition to the more physical arts of her birthright, Allison would still have leaned towards that side of her nature. Losing a mother at too young an age and an aunt too soon after that instilled in her older sister an unquenchable thirst for knowledge contained in musty old books and in their youngest sister a frightened aversion to her own power, which she unknowingly poured into her art. In Allison, loss created a lust for vengeance that threatened to crack her skin and peel her to the bone. 

Dawn’s familiar was a small, dark raven that checked in on the full moon and otherwise lived her own life. She appeared one night in the dead of winter. Dawn held her dark feathers to her chest and cried and cried and wouldn’t speak of why. Months later they learned of their mother’s death, but by that time Dawn had already mourned in her own way, had turned her spine to steel. She didn’t shed a tear at the funeral, just held Allison with one hand and Clary with the other; too young to be a rock for such small children and yet no one dared come to take her burden from her. 

Clary’s familiar was a small grey mouse that the cats never chased and her sister never acknowledged willingly. Allison can’t remember a time when the little guy hadn’t been underfoot, stealing Clary’s art pencils and sneaking into her room, trying to get her attention. On Clary’s fourteenth birthday, Dawn bought her a cage and put him inside. A lecture posing as a birthday present, Clary called it. 

Allison was sure her familiar wasn’t coming. It wasn’t rare for a witch who favored offensive spellwork to have a familiar too wild to be found. Something that hid itself away far from where it could do accidental harm. 

Some witches just didn’t have familiars. Dawn pointed this out time and again, just when Allison didn’t really want her to – her eyes full of concern and her fingers marking her place in a book or tying her hair back on her way out the door. To have three familiars in one family was strange. Their mother’s family had always been strong in this regard, but with no way to know anything about their father… 

Allison convinced herself she was better this way. 

_A lone wolf_ , she laughed, her fingers sliding through Dawn’s long hair as she braided it in front of the fire. 

_I don’t think you’re a wolf,_ Clary would muse from her perch at the window, a sketchpad on her lap and her hands in constant motion. _Not a lone one anyway._

Allison sometimes felt as though she was the one out of three of them that needed their little pack the most. That her two sisters would flourish on their own and it was really her clinging to them, holding them close in fear of being alone. 

 

Each thought that of the others. 

That’s what sisters are; pack animals with a strong sense of loyalty that don’t know how to let the others fly free without losing a piece of themselves in the bargain. 

 

The forest around their grandmother’s home on the outskirts of the tiny town they had always called home with a deep sense of frustration was untouched by anyone but Allison’s soft footfall – even in summer. 

There were legends about the forest – strange creatures and ghosts and wild animals that could rip out your throat before you thought to scream. 

Grams laughed at them all and gathered up her baskets and her granddaughters and tripped out into the shadows to gather her herbs and bury her secrets. Allison running from tree to tree, climbing so high she felt like she was flying. 

After grams died, the others didn’t like going into the forest anymore. It was too painful them. So now Allison went alone, armed with Dawn’s baskets and her bow and quiver. She could spend hours alone under the trees, regardless of the weather, without feeling restless or suffocated by the silence. When she was home alone she fidgeted and worried and chewed holes in her bottom lip, wore out the carpets in the hall. On those rare occasions that Dawn and Clary were both gone, Allison generally escaped into the cool woods that creeped further into their backyard every year. She knew to leave a note on the counter so the others wouldn’t worry over her absence, but she also never felt the need to rush back. 

As if, when she was safe beneath the trees with her weapons on her back and the soft scent of Dawn’s herbs floating up to her, there was nothing to fear anywhere in the world. 

The week after grams died, she had practically lived in the forest. She and Dawn had built a treehouse several years before just a few yards in and she slept there for three nights, until Clary came out crying, curling up into her sleeping bag with her. It was less a house than it was a few rickety beams of wood perched precariously under a tarp. But it kept her dry while she needed it. She dragged Clary back to the house and the next day took the house down. 

Dawn helped her fold up the tarp that had seen so many of their childhood games and didn’t say a word. 

_I won’t come back next time,_ Allison had finally said, her throat raw from crying, her face dry for the first time in days. 

Dawn blinked slowly, _No. You’ll always come back._ They walked a while in silence. On the edge of the forest, just in sight of the house, Dawn grabbed her elbow, _I’m more worried about you never leaving._

_I’m **never** leaving!_

_No… I mean…_ Dawn bit her lip and shifted her weight. _Clary has her art and I have my books… you had the tree house. If you stay cooped up with us forever, I’m worried we’ll lose you and… I don’t know…_ She shook her head and then walked to the house, leaving Allison behind. 

It wasn’t the first time that Allison felt like Dawn was twenty paces ahead of her. 

It _was_ the first time she didn’t feel a pull to run after her, to try to catch up, to grab her sister’s hand and laugh in her face and try to shoulder a bit of the burden, to twirl them around and pretend that they didn’t have the weight of a broken heart to carry around. 

 

Dawn had her books and her herbs and her languages and her raven and her burdens.   
Clary had her paper and her paint and her magic and her mouse and her fear. 

Allison had her bow and her arrows and her trees and her silent strength. 

Which she didn’t think was all that much to offer, but it was what she had. 

 

The summer the year she turned seventeen was an ordinary summer, all things considered. She graduated and was set-up to take a job with the local doctor’s office as a front office secretary. It didn’t pay well, but it looked damn good on a resume and she could keep her weekend and evening hours at the coffee shop. She was aware that Dr. Hart had offered her the job out of respect for grams, but they all decided a long time ago to accept the pity and charity of their neighbors while they had it. 

They were leaving soon, anyway. 

Dawn insisted that she enroll in online classes that fall – easy stuff she could do at work without anyone batting an eye. GE stuff that would transfer anywhere. Which only gave Allison a couple of months of relative freedom. 

She spent more and more time in the forest. 

It wasn’t that she hadn’t had friends in high school – there were a few girls that she could count on for a sleepover or movie night if she needed it, but Dawn had always been her best friend and when she left high school two years before to work full-time, Allison had retreated more than maybe she should have. And now, graduating a year early only pushed that wedge more firmly between her and the friends she still had left. 

Out in the forest, she wasn’t avoiding her friends or her high school or the empty room at the end of the hall with all of grams’ stuff still inside and untouched. Out here, she was just a seventeen year old girl who really loved archery and maybe other than that was normal.

Even if there was nothing whatsoever normal about her life. 

 

The summer was hot. 

It should have been mild, maybe. Or sticky. Something with humidity and sweat dripping down her spine reminding her that she was there, that she was real. Allison never needed to be reminded how real her skin was beneath her clothes, but the imagery would have been nice. A sticky summer would have appealed to Dawn, the words full of alliteration and curling thirst beneath repeated, mournful tones. A mild summer would have appealed to Clary, the temperature a bit too cool allowing her to wrangle the stillness of sunbeams onto her sketchpad. 

But this is Allison’s story. And so it was none of these things. It was hot. Not too mild and not too humid. A burning sort of heat that seemed to come only from the sun, easily escapable in the shade of her trees. 

She was standing with her legs wide and bare and tan and a sweater tied around her waist and thick-soled boots on her feet and her bow cocked in her hands, ready to fire, when her familiar curled onto the ground at her side. She was more startled that a cat that size had managed to sneak up on her when she was usually so hyper-aware of her surroundings, than that a tawny cougar was lying patiently only three feet from her. 

For a moment or two, she didn’t move, only aware of the animal through her peripheral vision. For a minute she calculated the risk of turning and embedding her arrow into its hide. And then she thought of the horrified expressions on her sisters’ faces the first time she bagged a wild hare, like she had personally _slaughtered_ their hearts and brought them back as a present. Coming home with a cougar – as bizarrely placed as it was – slung across her back would probably result in her being forced to eat all her meals at the coffee shop for the next month, and there was really a limit to her intake of Danishes. 

And then she considered what would happen if she moved _at all_. There was clearly a very calm cougar within arm’s reach and she didn’t really want to be lunch. Was she going to be stuck like that forever?

Exhaling slowly, she released the arrow and it struck her target. Okay, it was an inch off and on any other day she’d be pretty pissed off at herself about that, but any other day wouldn’t have a _mountain lion_ in attendance. 

With very careful movements, she lowered her bow and turned her head to look at the cougar beside her. It was lying a bit like her sister’s cat Rain sometimes did when she was working on her art instead of paying him attention, head resting on its paws and eyes looking up solemnly and a bit sadly. 

_Are you a **sad** scary lion?_ she asked. Because well – why not?

The cougar _rolled its eyes_ at her. She would swear on her bow that the damn thing ROLLED ITS EYES like a human.

_Did you… I’m insane. I’m crazy, aren’t I?_

The cougar tilted its head to one side and then let out a deep breath before standing up, looking at her one last minute, and then walking very sedately off into the forest. 

_Well… **fuck.**_

 

 

Three days later Dawn threw her out of the house for pacing from room to room while she was trying to study with a basket and a list of herbs to gather that she didn’t really need (Clary had already locked her door three hours previously because she was tired of Allison coming in only to wander around for a minute and then leave again); in general they were used to her restlessness, but three solid days of it had them all on edge. So, armed with a trusty basket and her favorite bow, she made her way into her sanctuary. 

The cougar was sunbathing on a rock near a stream – asleep in that way that house cats often are, as if they are sleeping from sheer boredom with their eyes half-open as if daring you to interrupt them. Allison sat down nearby and watched for a minute.

_You know you’re in the wrong county, right? Hell I think you may be on the wrong side of the continent._

The lion shook its head as if dislodging something from its ear and rolled on its back playfully, as if laughing at her. 

Allison laughed with it and set her equipment aside so she could lie down. 

She was safe enough on the other side of the stream. Anyway, this was her favorite spot, wasn’t it? The stream flowed wider in the spring and froze over in the winter, but this was always its widest spot – it split around a large cropping of boulders that caught more sunlight than most areas of the dark forest. The lion had claimed that spot today, but either bank was nearly as warm. Especially in the heat of summer. 

Allison propped her head up on her forearm and looked up into the branches of the trees. 

It was amazing how _still_ she could be here. How that yearning in her skin could suddenly – without warning – feel slightly at peace. Like a cork on a bottle. 

Birds chattered and bugs hummed and the spring trickled by and it could have been any other summer day. 

When she woke, the cougar was gone and the sky was starting to dim. She gathered up Dawn’s requests and made her way back home. 

Calm and at ease for the first time in days. 

 

 

They continued on like that for a few weeks, Allison and her wildcat. Sunbathing and hunting, edging close to each other only for Allison to shrink back. Witch or not – the cougar was still a wild animal and she didn’t feel entirely safe with it, even after weeks of nothing but good humor. 

 

One day she sat in the living room and watched Clary doing laundry. As she walked back and forth from the laundry nook behind the kitchen and back to the couch to fold clothes or upstairs to fetch or deliver items, her cat – a mangy old thing called Rain – stalked her playfully, popping out from behind furniture or batting things out of her hand. Sometimes even darting away from her as if to say, “haha you can’t catch me!”

 _Rain is playing with you, you know?_ Allison mused from the overstuffed chair in the corner. 

Clary tossed her ponytail, _Yeah well, he can’t very well help me iron, can he? Unlike a certain lazy sister of mine._

Allison threw a pillow at her and smiled when Rain leaped out to pounce on it the minute it landed on the floor. 

It gave her an idea. 

 

How did her cat always knew where she was? Sneaking up on her from the side or somehow lying in wait just a few paces ahead? 

Allison figured it was probably the same way Rain always knew where Clary was, watching from the wings, actually underfoot while Clary was distracted. 

Playing. 

So she decided to play back. 

 

Usually when she left the house she went directly into the treeline behind the house, heading South, but one day she walked out the front door and turned East, towards town. She tried not to look behind her, tried to pretend that she wasn’t waiting for her cat to find her. But she was. 

Once under the cover of the trees she broke into a run, following an old path down to the South, a few hundred feet from where she usually entered the forest. She got to the stream in only a few minutes, weaving her way haphazardly through the trees. Her usual spot was back upstream to the West of the house, today she turned to go further East, jumping from side to side of the stream. 

There was a small pond down to the East. She didn’t usually go there – especially in the summer – because sometimes kids and teenagers from town would come down to play there. But earlier that month a community pool was finally opened – after years of town meetings and bake sales – so she knew the pond would be empty. 

When she got to the pond she was out of breath and a little sweaty.

And her lion was waiting for her on a rock near the pond’s edge, standing on wide legs and purring deeply. 

Allison had only heard it purr a couple of times. 

When she came into the clearing she groaned, _How did you know?_

The cat jumped on and off the rock, a bit like Rain would do when he was excited, and then rolled on its back, feet high up in the air. 

Allison laughed, _Show off._

The lion angled its head back towards her – still on its back, its long tail tapping slowly.

Allison winked and ran in the opposite direction. 

She could hear the cougar behind her, large paws soft on the earth always just a few paces away, and she ran faster, darting to and fro like she was a cat herself. For a moment, she wondered if she was only tempting the thing to eat her, goading it into thinking her as prey – and then it appeared on her left, hanging from a tree branch and looking rather smug. 

Well if this was how she was going to die, it would be a helleva way to go. 

Playing cat and mouse with a mountain lion.

That she was beginning to think wasn’t as wild as she’d originally assumed. 

It was waiting for her at their little island, asleep in the sun. Allison was winded and exhilarated. She collapsed next to the stream and whispered, _Next time, cat._

 

She began implementing her bow into the game, shooting off scraps of cloth with her scent in a different direction than where she was going. She was never fast enough or clever enough to actually throw her wildcat off her trail, but they both seemed to enjoy the challenge. 

Her arrows were always neatly stacked on the back porch the next morning. 

 

 

Until one week – near the end of summer – when it wasn’t there. 

It took Allison only about ten minutes to realize that she was alone in the forest. She made her way slowly to the little rock island but there was nothing there. No hint of her copper-colored cat anywhere. 

She lay on the rock until it grew cold and hard beneath her back and then dragged herself back inside. 

For nearly nine days it was the same, just Allison alone waiting on a rock.

She didn’t dare tell Dawn or Clary – knew that they would be terrified of her sister making friends with a potentially very dangerous wild animal. (Or they would point out what she _should_ have already come to terms with: that it wasn’t at all wild and that she had found her familiar at last. But that was even more heartbreaking, because what if it didn’t come back?)

On the tenth day, she woke up on the rock and found her wildcat curled into her side, purring deeply and fast asleep, it’s large head gently resting on top of its own back. Allison reached out to run her fingers through the soft coat and two hazel eyes opened to stare deeply at her. 

_You came back,_ she whispered as they stared at each other. 

The cougar let out a huff of breath and Allison smiled. 

_Just don’t leave again, okay?_

And like that, the cougar was gone and Allison was once again alone in the forest, the sky beginning to darken. 

 

Three weeks passed and in that time Allison came to the very discouraging conclusion that her familiar had found her wanting and had decided to move on. She came to terms with that in her own, frighteningly stoic way, and tried to soldier on. It was nearly autumn and that meant she’d soon be short on free time, anyway. 

She filled her days with her sisters – teasing and cajoling them and throwing herself into their projects. Dawn eyed her curiously from time to time, but had learned long ago not to pry into Allison’s moods. Clary was hell-bent on being a teen right out of a horror film and alternated between being sugary-sweet and screaming through locked doors. 

It was like any other summer in the Rosse household. 

 

Until one night, when the doorbell rang and no one was expecting pizza and Clary was grounded for the tantrum she had thrown earlier that week about dish-duty and Dawn never went on dates anymore and that left Allison to deal with it and on their front porch there stood a girl with long copper hair and bright hazel eyes filled with tears.

 _I’m sorry,_ she whispered. _It’s just that you asked me not to leave and I had to explain why I did._


	2. spring (water)

Lydia Martin had known her entire life that she had been adopted. It wasn’t something that anyone said, in fact most unknowing people liked to point out that she had her mother’s smile or her father’s hair or something else equally ridiculous. 

She had to have been adopted because there was no other logical explanation for her _difference_. 

It began before she was conscious of it. Though her parents, her sweetly oblivious parents, liked to laugh about the signs; the crying fits that she had as a baby just hours before a catastrophe, her wide eyed _knowing_. She heard her mother tell a dinner party stories about herself, as if she was a horror story to be told over candlelight, the haunted child. Her mother grew more superstitious, her father spent more hours at the office. She could sense them drifting apart, her between them, her eyes seeing too much and her words too _knowing_. 

When she was seven years old she collapsed and was in the hospital for a week. When she woke up, the world was still and a television in her room showed smoke and chaos. Her mother grew desperate for answers after that, answers for the daughter that woke in the instant of death, answers for the way she knew who was calling before the phone rang, who knew sales the day before they occurred, who seemed able to see into the fabric of reality. 

When she was seven years old she learned how to hide herself. 

It’s a strong lesson for such a young girl. And she perfected it. 

Stopped flinching in the instant before the hammer fell. 

Pretended not to see the divorce papers lingering in her father’s mind for months before they arrived. 

She learned to hide other things, too. Her mother had wanted a normal daughter and so she threw herself into the task with steadfast determination. There was no enthusiasm, just willpower. She papered her room with hideous posters of teen boys with too-white grins and laughed a little too much and kissed boys a little too early. She learned to hide her knowledge behind a grin and a toss of her hair. She learned that she had to hide a lot more. She hid her books on astrophysics and archaic Latin behind magazines with women pouting on the covers. She hid her 4.0 behind a string of boyfriends. She hid her loneliness behind a façade of parties and social activities. 

She hid her worry and care behind bored sarcasm. 

People loved her. She was loved. She was desired. She was popular.

She was Lydia Martin. 

 

The spring after she turned fifteen it rained so much she felt as if the world was in mourning. It didn’t help that she knew someone important had died. Tragically. Someone important that she was supposed to love, supposed to know. She watched the news, she scoured the internet, she did so many Google searches the librarians were starting to get concerned. She woke once to the sound of her own screaming. She told her mother she was dreaming of being on a rollercoaster.

She applied her makeup more carefully that spring. She curled her hair with precision. That spring she favored long ringlets to her usual soft curls. Because it took attention, she had no choice but to sit in front of the mirror and painstakingly curl each inch-wide stretch of hair from tip to root. She perfected the dark wings of eyeliner over her eyelashes. She wore slightly taller heels than before, putting as much attention as she could into each step. Never missing one single step, never looking anything other than the picture of perfection. 

The world was wet and her dreams were rivers and lakes and oceans of tears. 

Only she couldn’t help but feel the tears weren’t her own. 

 

 

When the rain stopped, the dreams stopped. She stopped being a vessel for pain – which is how she had felt, beneath her perfect makeup and high heels, like she was a living embodiment of someone else’s pain and there seemed to be no way to shield herself from it.

After that, the silence was a relief.

And all the more lonely; as if the thing that had been causing her so much pain was actually the thing holding her together. 

After that, the silence was deafening. 

She found herself reaching for that dark river of heartache. She wondered where all that pain had gone, did it dissipate into the air like water rising up to meet the sun? 

And who did it belong to in the first place?

Only thing was, with the silence came a deadening apathy. The show of living almost felt like too much. As if she was just going through the motions, when before she was made up of so many living parts. 

She dreamed and couldn’t remember her own dreams.

She woke up thirsty and nothing satisfied. 

She longed for her dark river of salt and tried not to cast judgement upon herself for reaching out and hoping to find pain. 

 

 

A year passed without her even seeming to realize it. A year without dreams, a year without caring. She did a lot of research in that year, as stealthily as she could – though it wasn’t like anyone really paid much attention to anything she did, anyway. 

And then it was spring again, wet and demanding and bright. 

She turned sixteen in a rainstorm, face held back, arms held out wide as if to embrace the sky as it fell. 

She turned sixteen and began to dream of a girl with chocolate hair and eyes the color of dark axinite with long fingers and a strong jaw and a heaviness to her heart. 

She turned sixteen and fell in love with a girl in her dreams. 

 

 

All her research told her that dreams cannot create images from nothing, any face or landmark you see in a dream has its foundation in reality, you just have to look for it. That mountain is just a pile of dirty laundry on your floor, the purple sky is your favorite sweater, the witch with ragged hair is your father’s assistant that scared you when you were five years old and still couldn’t protect yourself from the secret thoughts of strangers that invaded your mind. 

All her research has always prepared her for anything the world can throw at her – except her own incomprehensible mind. 

She had tried desperately for years to forget this, to shove this under her bed along with all the things about herself that she finds annoying or too complicated to deal with. 

All her research has always prepared her for anything the world can throw at her – except her own wayward heart. 

 

 

_Coach is going to fail you for that stunt you pulled in class yesterday._

One thing that Lydia Martin has always allowed the world to see, one thing that she has claimed for herself and never allowed presumptions or social status or her mother’s quizzical brow take away from her, is her strange friendship with Stiles. He was the only one she knew who was even half as smart as her – actually, he kept up quite well despite his straggling 2.0 and obsession with Scott McCall. 

He was also the only one who could see behind her bullshit. 

And only thought more highly of her because of it. 

_Yeah … well… it was still a damn good essay._

_That’s not the point, Stiles._

_Hi. I’m Lydia. Today I’m avoiding something in particular by having an argument about something I genuinely don’t give two shits about because I think my friend Stiles is an idiot._

_I don’t think you are an idiot._

_Thanks!_

_I know you are._

_Lydia._

_Do you ever clean your room?_

_No. I just wait for you to come over and do it._

_That’s gross, Stiles._

_Fine. If you won’t tell me what’s going on with you, then I’m going to make you watch me play this new game I found last night. There’s lots of gunfire. You’re gonna hate it._

Lydia flopped back on Stiles bed and tossed an old stuffed bear from hand to hand. _I don’t even know how to…_

Stiles lay down on the bed next to her, shoving her with his bony elbow and hip to get more room, resting his head against hers, _One of these days you’re gonna stop being Miss Cryptic with me and actually tell me what has you so spooked, you know._

Tears fell down Lydia’s cheeks. _I’m not **spooked**._

_And I’m not dashingly attractive. See? Lying is super easy._

She laughed and relaxed more into his side. _You are dashingly attractive._

_I’d feel more smug about it if I wasn’t lying in bed with the prom queen._

_Shut up._ She punched him in the arm and he laughed, curling into a ball and pressing his face into her neck, his knees wrapping around her waist. _I’m not a prom queen when I’m here._

 _No? What are you?_ He wrapped his arms around her waist and nestled into her, she played with the skin on his elbow and stayed silent. _What are you, Lydia Martin?_

 _I don’t **know**._ Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat as if that would solve it. She was always looking for the easiest fix. It was her second largest flaw. _A girl who falls in love with someone in a dream that she’s never met._

 _Like a Disney princess!?_ Stiles laughed, his whole body vibrating. 

She laughed with him, letting the rhythm of his body carry her into something so far removed from her own stilted, controlled life. This was why she loved him, why she never let go no matter what happened in her life, why she came willingly into house and slept so many nights curled up beside him in his bed. Because he _felt_ everything and never held back – and with him, she almost felt like feeling wasn’t all that bad and that hiding was actually the worse alternative. 

She let him guide her back into calm, following his lead as he sobered again, his body becoming still and his breathing becoming even.

_Damn. I was holding out hope that you’d fall in love with me._

_No you weren’t._

_No. I wasn’t._ He smiled and kissed her cheek. 

Once, in the seventh grade, they tried to be something different for each other. For two months they held hands at lunch and kissed and none of it felt right for either one of them. On their two-month anniversary, Lydia opened her front door to find Stiles crying on her porch, a present in his hands carefully wrapped. She didn’t tell anyone why they broke up and Stiles fielded strange questions from his dad about Lydia for the next year. She threw herself into dating lacrosse players and he threw himself into one weird hobby after another. 

_What’s wrong with us?_ she hadn’t asked that since they were fourteen years old, Stiles leaning over her to wipe away her tears from another painful breakup and mascara running down her face unattractively. Then, he’d told her there was nothing wrong with them, they just loved in different ways. And then he’d held her until she stopped crying and then made his dad watch _Princess Diaries_ with them for the umpteenth time that year. (It always made Sheriff Stilinski cry, but he never figured out that that was the reason why they loved it so much.)

Stiles hummed, _There’s nothing wrong with you, Lyd. We just gotta put our impressive brains together and find the girl from your dreams._ She stiffened in his arms and he chuckled, poking her with his forehead, _Like I didn’t know._

_I should have said something._

_You should say a lot._ He took a deep breath, _So should I, probably._

_Words are overrated._

_Words are **under** rated and we should use them more._

They wouldn’t. They were safe for each other precisely because they could say to the other all the things they couldn’t tell anyone else. They were safe for each other precisely because they didn’t say the things they should. 

 

 

Over the next eight months, Stiles pushed her on a regular basis about the mysterious girl. He had sketches of her hung all over his room. She sneakily suspected that he was running a hack into some facial recognition programs that he really shouldn’t have access to. But she didn’t ask. 

Their friendship flourished on knowing without asking. 

(They probably both deserved better… but children who know how to hide are taught too early to do otherwise. And helping another hide is the clearest sign a child can give to prove their love and loyalty.)

Over the next eight months, Lydia dreamed of a girl with dark hair and bright eyes and nothing whatsoever was solid or sure. And Stiles kept her secrets, like he always had. And they never discussed his, just like they always had. 

It was almost as if life was finally going back to normal. 

 

And then it was spring once again. 

 

_**A little old house, built out of memory and loved out of time, surrounded by woods that creeped up on either side. Threatening to take back that which was theirs, but only with the intent to protect and envelop and not with the desire to destroy. As if the house itself, its little garden in the back, its fruit trees, and thick grass, was a gift from the trees they were just waiting to take back. A little old house with smoke coming out the chimney, the sound of laughter and shouts inside. A little old house ringing with the sound of girls.** _

_**Her dark-haired girl was inside. She circled around the house three times, waiting for her to come out. She didn’t.** _

_**That was alright. She could be patient.** _

_**She waited in the rain, tail tapping on the ground.** _

 

Lydia woke up and wasn’t herself. She was too low to the ground and was covered in hair and everything smelled _too much_. It was hard to walk, so low and on four limbs instead of two. 

So she did the only sensible thing she could think of. 

She went to Stiles’ house. 

He was at school, because it was a school day though she was certain that when she had gone to sleep it had been a Saturday evening and she had had a date the next day with Jackson or… someone. But he always left his window open. She slipped in and made a nest for herself on his bed and fell asleep. 

She avoided looking in any mirrors or reflective surfaces on the way. 

She woke to Stiles’ scent and raised her head to find him staring at her, face ashen white, and a baseball bat in his hands. She rolled her eyes and stretched out her back, paws in front of her digging playfully on his comforter. She sat up patiently and waited for him to figure it out. And hoped he didn’t try to hit her with that ridiculous bat. 

She wasn’t sure exactly _what_ she was, but she knew that a wooden bat wouldn’t hold up against her.

Which was simultaneously thrilling and a little terrifying. 

_Okay. Okay. You are a mountain lion. Why is there a mountain lion on my bed?_ Stiles began pacing back and forth across his bedroom floor. He looked at her seriously, _Are you a gift from Derek Hale? Because I **told** him that gift basket last of pigeons wasn’t from me, but I don’t think he believed me._

Lydia narrowed her eyes at him, she was well-aware that he _had_ in fact, sent that gift basket of _live pigeons_ to Derek Hale. He’d used her laptop to place the order. 

Stiles laughed, _You are from Derek!_

Lydia rolled her eyes and shook her head, letting out an angry breath. Get it together, Stiles.

He cocked his head to one side, _Do you understand me, kitty-cat?_

She snapped at him, pissed now. This was taking far too long and fucking “kitty cat” he had to be joking. Except she was a mountain lion, so snapping at him actually scared him. A lot. His face went that ghastly shade of white again and she … well she didn’t really feel all that bad. _Kitty-cat_ , indeed. But it wasn’t helping, her losing her temper with him, when he didn’t even know it was her. 

She let out a low purr and put her head down on her paws, trying to apologize. 

Light dawned in Stiles’ eyes and he reached out a hand to scratch her on the nose. Which felt _awesome_ , actually. _Lydia?_ he whispered. 

She growled a little. She would have nodded or something but he was too close, she didn’t want to scare him again. 

_Lydia if that’s you I am seriously **pissed** at you for hiding something this big from me for so many years but…_ he looked down into her face. _Holy shit. You … Lyd? Are you stuck? Can you shift back?_

Lydia shook her head slowly from side to side. The very un-cat-like gesture causing her to go a bit cross-eyed with effort. 

_Is this why you weren’t in school yesterday?_

Lydia’s head shot up and she looked toward the calendar on the wall.

_Yeah, Lyd. It’s Tuesday. How long have you been gone?_

She growled.

 _Oh right. No hablan Inglés. Forgot._ He winced. 

She huffed out another sigh and he scratched her again on the nose. 

_And you have no idea how to get back, do you? That’s why you came here._

He went to his computer and started typing furiously. _I’ll do what I can, Lyd. But … I mean… without really knowing… **goddamnit** you idiot. I could have **helped** …_ His voice cracked. She went over to him and rubbed her head against his leg in apology. _I think I prefer you this way._ He was teasing, but she still snapped at his knee a little anyway. He just laughed and rubbed her head affectionately. _I’m buying you a kitten after this… or myself. You’re buying me a kitten after this._

She fell asleep with her back pressed up against his legs and dreamed of nothing at all. 

She woke up stiff and cranky and hungry and very, very nakedly-human. Stiles was still in his chair at the desk, asleep with his head on the keyboard. She got up as quickly as she could and threw on an old shirt from the pile of “mostly-clean” clothes on the floor and a pair of basketball shorts in the corner. 

She also considered waking Stiles up, but the clock read two in the morning, and she knew it wouldn’t be the first time he spent an evening asleep _on_ his computer. Instead, she padded down the dark hallway to find something to eat in the kitchen. 

Sheriff Stilinski was sitting at the kitchen table, a box of takeout in front of him amidst a pile of paperwork and files. He raised his eyebrows at her, reaching for the French fries, _Does your mother know you are here?_

She shrugged.

He sighed and put the fries in his mouth. _I’ll call her in the morning._

Lydia walked to the table and peeked at the container. A bacon cheeseburger with cheesy French fries. Without a word, she took the box off the table and threw it in the trash under the sink and then opened the refrigerator and began pulling ingredients out for a salad. There was some chicken in there, too. _Chicken Caesar sound okay?_

_I already have Stiles griping at me about what I eat, I don’t need you---_

_Apparently you do, Sheriff._ Lydia set to work. She knew the Stilinski kitchen better than her own. 

Within a few minutes, dinner was ready and Lydia made him clear the table. _No work at dinner._

_Lydia. It’s **my** house. Also it’s nearly three in the morning._

She just glared at him until he cleared the papers and files to one side of the table. 

Over her salad, she looked across the table at the man who had been a kind of sanctuary when she had been a child and terrified of every shadow in every corner, who didn’t pry into her continued presence in his house now that she was a teen. _Thank you, Sheriff._

_I should be thanking you. What did you do to this chicken?_

She blushed and took a bite of her salad.

_You know. For a while I thought… well, I’ve thought a lot of things about you and Stiles over the years. But his mom… just before she died she told me we had to watch out for you, keep you close. I teased her, said she just wanted to be sure to train her daughter-in-law early._

He smiled across the table and Lydia smiled back, willing herself not to cry. Stiles’ mother’s death affected all three of them in ways none of them liked to think about. 

_She said you’d always be a Stilinski, but not to get my hopes up. Said you and Stiles weren’t… that way._

Lydia shook her head, _I think we’d both like to be, but…_

The sheriff stopped her with a wave of his hand, _You were a daughter to her and so you are a daughter to me. No matter what. So I won’t ask why you are wearing my son’s clothes at two in the morning and I won’t ask where you’ve been the past two days. But if you needed help, don’t forget that I’m here._

 _God dad, you are such a sap._ Stiles slouched into the kitchen and grabbed a plate from the cupboard before joining them at the table and digging into the serving that Lydia had purposefully made for him. 

_Yeah, I guess I am. Guess she’s too good for you, anyway._

_Well,_ Stiles said through a mouthful of salad. I think we already knew that.

They joked around for a while, interrogated the sheriff on secret news from the station, and then sent him to bed promising to do the dishes. 

_He’d stay up all night if I let him,_ Stiles said at the sink while Lydia made the leftover chicken into sandwiches to send off with the sheriff in the morning. 

_Like father like son, I guess._

_I couldn’t find anything, Lyd._

_I know._

_Where were you?_

Lydia stayed silent for a long time, until Stiles finally turned toward her, arms folded over his chest and wearing his “no fucking around this time Martin” expression.

_I went to find her._

_Her? The girl from your dreams?_

_Yeah. I mean. I think so._

_Why?_

Lydia shrugged, tears threatening to pour down her face. _I think she needs me._

His hands were wet and a little soapy from doing the dishes, but she let him hug her anyway, sinking into his warmth and letting him comfort her … all of her. 

For the first time. 

 

 

Nothing happened for the next week. 

Stiles bought her a tracking device. She was mildly offended that he got it from a _Petsmart_ , but they couldn’t really afford an expensive James Bond-style chip or anything. He put it into a not-too-unattractive necklace. Something they hoped wouldn’t fall off if she transitioned again.

_I need to be able to find you if you disappear for too long, Martin._

She just nodded and put the necklace on. 

She told him about her dreams, about knowing before seeing, about always somehow _understanding_ what was coming. He had a million theories as to _what_ she was, but none of it really explained the whole turning into a mountain lion thing that seemed to be happening. 

He tried to get her to predict the lottery and instead she saw a fire destroying a building full of people. When she saw the building on the news a week later, she sent him a screencap of the report on youtube and he never asked her to predict something again. He bought her chocolate to apologize and she took it mostly because… she felt a bit like the universe owed her some chocolate after all the shit it had put her through.

When she dreamed of the house again, it was still raining, but summer was right around the corner. She woke up on his floor three days later, his eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep and too much caffeine. 

The tracking device told them she’d travelled a couple thousand miles and back in the span of three days. 

_Did you see her?_

She shook her head, _She’s not ready I don’t think. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for._

He put his arm around her shoulder, _She’ll come out. She’ll see me._

_But she won’t be seeing **me**. She’ll be seeing some bizarrely misplaced mountain lion completely lost._

_Maybe that’s what she needs to see?_

She couldn’t help but feel like the girl in that house in the woods didn’t _want_ her and this whole thing was just another awful prank pulled by the universe. Knowledge she couldn’t stop or use, shape-shifting she couldn’t control, and a heart pulled to the opposite end of the country by a girl who didn’t know she existed. 

 

 

All through that spring, she lost days every week, coming closer together every time. They needed an alibi and soon. 

_Eventually she’s going to come out and then… and then what, Stiles? I’m going to have to stay and see where it leads. She **needs** me for some reason and I can’t keep disappearing every week like this._

_What about pneumonia?_

_We already used that._

_How about an internship?_

_Um… actually that’s not bad._

With their combined powers, they created the perfect cover story for Stiles to submit to the school or her parents if she was ever gone for longer than three days. The necklace tracker was working so he’d always know how to find her if something went wrong. 

_What if I wake up out there and I’m naked?_

They set up a post office box in the town nearest to where the gps said she was going and put the key next to the tracker on her necklace. It was the best they could do. Stiles shipped her packages of clothes and money and a cheap phone. All on her father’s dime, of course. 

They prepared for everything. 

Except for what she was supposed to do once the girl actually came out of the house. 

 

 

_I’m scared, Stiles._

He swiveled his chair around to face her and set his elbows on his knees, _Well I think that’s a good thing, actually._

_A good thing?_

_Yeah… when’s the last time anything scared Lydia Martin?_

_When we were eight and you climbed onto the roof and tried to fly and broke your leg in three places. I was scared then._

_When’s the last time you were scared for yourself?_

She bit her lip.

He laughed and turned back to his computer, _Oh man. I can **not** wait to meet this girl._

 

 

_What if she doesn’t want me?_

_Who could not want you?_

_I dunno. Maybe a girl who’d rather have a mountain lion stalk her than an actual girl._

_So if she doesn’t want you, we’ll use my research on witchcraft to curse her and you’ll find someone else._

_So just wait for another dream girl?_

_No._ His eyes darkened. _Next time, you’re choosing for yourself. No more of this ‘the universe controls me’ bullshit. The Lydia I know and love wouldn’t put up with this shit._ He examined her, _Aren’t you angry about this even a little bit?_

She laughed, _Maybe I will be once I understand what’s going on. Keep on with the research._

 

 

Just as spring was turning into summer, she finally saw the girl with her own eyes, no dream-filter on. She was carrying a bow and arrows and was less surprised by Lydia’s presence than maybe an ordinary human should have been. 

She was full of energy and life and anger and purpose in a way that made the hair on Lydia’s spine stand up. 

She was awake for the entire run back to Stiles’ backyard. 

_I’m not letting the lion take over anymore._

_You think that’s what’s been happening?_

_It’s what you think. Why didn’t you say something before?_

He shrugged. _Losing spans of time was a defense mechanism. I didn’t want to push you too hard.  
_

She sat down on his bed and towel-dried her damp hair, the impossible run from the previous night had worn her out. _I can’t keep running back and forth. Put Plan B into effect this weekend._

He took her hand, _Are you ready for this? Are you ready to be in control of this?_

She drew in a long, shaking breath, _No. But I am ready to know her._

 

 

She shifted in his backyard at twilight three days later and let him scratch her nose before she began her cross-country run. He sat down on his haunches in front of her and took her face in his hands, _I think you need her just as much as she needs you, maybe she can tell you what you are._

Lydia shook her head and bopped him on the nose softly with one paw. 

_You’re more than just my sister from another mister, kiddo. You’re amazing._ He stood up. _So you were waiting for her to tell you just **how** amazing you are, doesn’t mean it’s any less true._

Lydia growled at him.

_Go. Go find out who you are. Don’t come home until you’re sure._

 

 

Three months later, she returned and crawled into his bed and cried and refused to speak to anyone for a week. For a while, she was a zombie, she avoided him and threw herself into being a perfect daughter to her shallow mother once again.

After three weeks, he booked two tickets and a hotel room and went to her house and personally packed her bag with her favorite clothes and her curling iron and her lucky eyeliner and dragged her to the airport. 

She didn’t protest much. 

Even when he personally drove her to a house burned into a memory and waited for an hour on the street for her to work up the courage to open her door. 

_Do you want me to come with you?_

_I can shift to get back to the hotel._

He nodded and turned the key in the ignition, _If you aren’t back in five hours, I’m coming back and I’m tearing the front door off the hinges._

 _I love you,_ she whispered.

_Go get your girl._

 

 

After a year of dreaming and wondering and running and playing and hiding, Lydia Martin finally knocked on the door of the house in the woods that held the key to what was either going to save her or be her undoing. 

Allison answered the door, mid-laugh, hair wild around her shoulders. At the sight of Lydia on the porch, she stopped and her face turned hard.

 _I’m sorry,_ Lydia whispered. _It’s just that you asked me not to leave and I had to explain why I did._

 

 

 


	3. autumn (air)

_It’s just that you asked me not to leave and I had to explain why I did._

Allison stared at the girl and stared and stared. Her eyes were familiar… dark with something that Allison recognized implicitly as loss – or fear. She stared because she wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to do and also because those _eyes_ , they were familiar, like a summer breeze. 

But that was impossible. It couldn’t possibly be… 

The girl stepped forward hesitantly, _**Please** , Allison you have to know me?_

Allison raised her chin and was about to give this strange girl with too-fashionable boots on her front porch a piece of her mind when Dawn suddenly appeared at her elbow. 

_Well there’s your wildcat! Why don’t you invite her inside? It looks like it’s getting chilly out there._

Lydia could feel the blood drain from her face, _How? How do you know?!_

In retrospect, yelling at someone she’d never met before was probably not the best way to handle this situation, but _fuck_ it’s not like a manual appeared under her pillow one night explaining how to deal with any of this. 

The girl reached out to take Lydia’s hand gently, _I’m so sorry. I’m Dawn. This is my sister Allison. You._ She paused and bit her lip, uncertainty creeping into her features. _I think you’d better come inside._ She edged Allison away from the entrance and held the door open wide for Lydia to walk through and then ushered her into a well-worn living room with several chairs and a small sofa clustered around a fireplace. Lydia sat on a low footstool near the fireplace, where she could see the front door and the stairs that lead upstairs. 

The soft strains of punk drifted down the stairs and a smell like burnt bananas came from somewhere behind the stairs where she hoped the kitchen was. Allison stood behind the chair Dawn had eased herself into and looked on-guard. 

Lydia remembered that look, that posture, from months ago. From when this all began. She was afraid again… god that was the _last_ thing she wanted! 

Dawn cleared her throat, _Allison why don’t you offer our guest a drink?_

Allison’s lips curled and it felt like a slap in Lydia’s face. _Does our **guest** have a name?_

Stiles’ voice came whispering in her ear, “No more of this ‘the universe controls me’ bullshit. The Lydia I know and love wouldn’t put up with this shit.” She smiled and raised her chin – a little shakily - _My name is Lydia. Lydia Martin._

_Would you like something to drink, Lydia?_ Dawn’s voice was soft, non-threatening. Like she had spent many a night coaxing stubborn teenage girls into doing things maybe they didn’t want to do. 

Lydia laughed. _Honestly, I don’t think I could keep anything down right now. I’m too nervous._

Dawn chuckled and then leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, _You’re not the only one._

Allison snorted and paced to the front door, looking out the window as if she was annoyed with the whole business. A previously unseen cat in the windowsill looked up at her, clearly perturbed at her proximity. She scratched its head absently. Lydia’s heart clenched in her chest. 

_Look._ She glanced around the room and then turned back to Dawn. _I don’t actually know what’s going on here? I … I was kinda hoping you could … I don’t know. Help me figure out what’s **happening to me**_

Allison didn’t look at her again, but her posture shifted. In cat-form maybe Lydia would have been able to figure out what that slight movement meant, but as a human she was completely at a loss. 

Dawn shook her head, _I’m not really sure what we can do to help?_

Lydia’s eyes burned, _I just want to know **what** I am._

At that moment, someone came galloping down the stairs – a young girl around thirteen or fourteen. _Hey losers, what’s for dinner? No one let Dawn in the kitchen right because—who the fuck is that?_

_Clary!_

_Language, Clary!_

The girl looked from Dawn to Allison and back to Lydia. _This better not be about fucking **magic**. You **promised** me!_

Dawn stood up, _Baby, this is Lydia. She …_ She paused, unsure for a half a moment, and then plowed through. _She’s been having weird dreams and stuff and might have turned into a mountain lion for a while and we can’t just kick her out._

Lydia stood up and caught Allison’s eye. In the same breath they both whispered, _How did you know that?_

The little girl narrowed her eyes at Lydia, _I know what to say. Get back in your car. Go home. Forget it._

Lydia shook her head, _I can’t. Well. I mean._ She smiled. _I tried. But someone made me come back._

_You have sisters, too?_ Clary glared accusingly at hers. 

Lydia bit back a smile, _Kind of like a brother? He’s … annoying._

Clary turned back to Dawn, _You promised._

Allison turned back to the window, _We promised not to practice once we left. We can’t stop things from falling in our lap._

_But… **grams** … that was what she was always saying. And then… it’s only been TWO YEARS and you’ve already forgotten!_

_Wait – two years since what?_ Lydia felt something prickling on the back of her neck. A memory. 

_Our grandmother,_ Dawn offered after a stilted silence. _She … passed. Two years ago._

_In April._ A cold knowing swept over Lydia and her voice cracked with the effort. She had known. She had always known. Had cried with them but couldn’t get to them in time. 

The sisters exchanged glances, a long conversation coming to conclusion in just a few  
Clary’s eyes gleamed, _I seriously fucking hate all of you._ She plopped down on the couch as far from Dawn and Lydia as she could get. _Someone better order pizza. I think this is going to take a while._ She dug a sketchpad out of the cushions and began drawing. 

Dawn smiled at her sister and then turned to Lydia, _So…_ She hesitated and angled her head towards where Allison still stood like a statue, her head low and eyes unseeing. _Can… can you start?_

So Lydia told them everything, from the very beginning. In halting, fragmented sentences that sometimes hung between them in the room like laundry hanging out to dry. Allison listened all from the door, guarding herself as best she could from the onslaught of information that was being hurled at her. 

It was strange enough to have developed a weird, twisted relationship with a wild mountain lion in her backyard, it was quite another thing to learn that her spookily-accurate older sister knew the whole time, and had also guessed before her that the lion was actually a girl. It was hard to know what stung more. 

Nothing stung. 

It was all just… their goddamn lives. 

_And I … I didn’t want to come back. I couldn’t keep being a cougar. I mean, that’s crazy. And I … but Stiles… he put me on a plane and now here we are I guess._

_So you had no intention of coming back? Some … some guy had to force you?_ Allison’s voice was eerily calm. Clary looked up from her sketchpad and raised her eyebrows at her. 

_That’s not… what I meant. I didn’t know what to say._

_Prove it,_ Clary interrupted, folding her arms over her chest. _Like this all sounds really sad and tragic – poor you being a witch and not knowing, whatever. Prove it._

_A — a **witch**? You mean like with a broom and a black hat? That’s ridiculous._

_Show us how you can change. Prove it._

Dawn shook her head, _Clary, stop._

_No. No. It’s okay. She’s right. You’re taking a lot on faith._

And then there was a copper cougar sitting placidly on their footstool in their living room. Allison couldn’t stop herself, she walked across the room and knelt in front of her friend, _You were gone a long time._

Lydia just stared at her. 

Allison curled her fingers in the thick coat at Lydia’s neck and whispered softly, tears falling freely down her face, _How can I trust you now?_

Lydia’s face appeared under her hands, a girl’s face, thin and smooth and honest, _If you don’t, how can I trust you?_

 

 

A skinny boy knocked on the door an hour after Lydia arrived and dragged her away with lots of laughter and wild gestures. 

Dawn found Allison in the kitchen, scraping bananas out of the waffle iron from the banana waffles Dawn had attempted to make that afternoon. The bananas burned and the dough never cooked. Which almost made it feel like a normal day again. 

_You **knew**_.

_Oh please. You were running around in the woods with a mountain lion. How could I not know?_

_We promised baby no more magic._

Dawn’s voice softened, _You know I can’t stop what I know. None of us can really stop being what we are._

 _Stop._ Allison drew in a long breath. _That’s not the fight I want to have today._

Dawn’s eyes narrowed and she hopped up on the counter next to the sink, _It’s not a fight you and I have ever had… despite what Clary—_

 _Maybe Baby is right!_ The two sisters stared at each other, both startled by the harshness in Allison’s tone. _If this is what happens… maybe I don’t want a part of it, either._

_You’re an idiot._

_No. I’m being practical, Dawnie._

_No. You’re being an idiot. Mom, grams. That sucked. That was shitty. That’s a **good** reason to turn our backs on,_ Dawn waved her hands in the air at nothing and everything, _on everything. But Lydia? She’s a **gift** , Alli._

_A familiar is a gift. A strung-out teenage witch who needs training is a goddamn responsibility. That we can’t handle. That I didn’t ask for._

Dawn stared at her knees, feet swinging back and forth, _You thought you found your familiar._

Allison perched herself up on the counter and leaned her head onto her sister’s shoulder, _A little. Maybe._

Clary peeked her head in at them, _Goddess you two are such saps._ She skipped into the kitchen, _So are we going to keep her?_

_Lydia? She’s not a pet, Baby._

_Like **duh** I know that. But she doesn’t have a family or like anything._ Halfway up the stairs she called down, _Plus she totally has the hots for Alli and it’s about damn time you got laid._

 _CLARISSA ADELE ROSSE!_ Their shout was lost in the _slam_ of a door upstairs and the dulcet tones of an electric guitar seeping through the floorboards.

Dawn started giggling, which caused her to lose balance and fall off the counter, sinking down onto the kitchen floor, _Mom would love her._

Allison smirked down at her clumsy sister, _Grams would be tearing her a new one right now for cursing._

 _Our own pirate._ Dawn sighed. _Mom would **love** that little girl_

 _Hey,_ Allison slid down to join her sister on the floor. _Mom **does** love her._

_So I’m not totally fucking her up?_

_You aren’t in this alone._

_Neither are you._ Dawn shoved Allison with her shoulder gently. _Not anymore. She loves you, your wildcat._

_She doesn’t know me._

_And you don’t know her._

_Great pep talk._

_So get to know her. Try._

Allison flopped back on her back, _So just let the magic rule my life the way it did mom’s and grams’?_

_No. Decide for yourself. But don’t cut yourself off from the possibility, either._

Allison tugged on Dawn’s hair, _Hey I’m supposed to be the practical one._

_Yeah well. I’m not the one that fell in love with a mountain lion. Guess there’s a first time for everything._

 

 

Allison found her the next morning sitting in a diner, waiting for a stack of pancakes because she needed the excess carbs in order to make up for all the crying from the night before. Also the waitress said they were the best pancakes in the whole tri-county area, which Stiles now was determined to test to the best of his ability. He ran off to the bathroom and then, like magic, Allison was sliding into the booth on the other side of her. 

_Did you kill Stiles?_

Allison smiled and shook her head, _Clary and Simon may have tackled him. They get a little overzealous sometimes, but he’s safe._

_Simon?_

_He’s like Clary’s Stiles._

Lydia nodded as the waitress set down two plates of pancakes, making chit-chat with Allison as she did so. It was a really small town, so it wasn’t terribly surprising that Gloria knew Allison, after all. They chatted about the weather – outside the leaves were starting to turn various shades of red and yellow – and then something about Allison tutoring Gloria’s nephew, before the older woman finally turned away. Her curiosity burned holes in Lydia’s designer denim jacket. She stood out like a sore thumb and she knew it. 

Neither ate. Lydia busied herself with butter and syrup and cutting everything into perfect bite-sized pieces. Pretending to eat was nearly the same as eating. Most people couldn’t tell the difference. 

_You broke your promise._

Lydia looked up, startled. 

Allison stared back at her, her axinite eyes soft and curious, _You were going to tell me why?_

 _Why I left,_ Lydia began slowly. _Can’t you think of any reason?_

Allison narrowed her eyes and leaned back in the booth – putting more space between them. As if there wasn’t a chasm of emptiness and broken promises and unspoken words between them.

_I’ve been dreaming about you for over a year and I showed up in your backyard as a really big cat and had no idea what was happening to me or why._

A group of teens a few feet over burst into raucous laughter. They looked like they had pulled an all-nighter. There were some letterman jackets here and there and one girl was curled up in the booth, her head on someone’s lap, completely asleep. They were carefree, young, and happy. 

Or maybe not nearly as happy as they seemed. Lydia was the master at disguising herself behind a mask of laughter. 

It didn’t take a genius to realize she was only one of many hiding in order to survive every day. She held her high and that wasn’t even the biggest lie she told. 

_That’s what. I’m asking why._ Allison finally said. 

_Why?_ Lydia played with her fork, drawing patterns in the syrup in puddles on her plate. _Because I was afraid. And I’m very rarely afraid._

Allison raised her eyebrows, _Afraid that we wouldn’t be able to fix you?_

_Afraid that you wouldn’t let me stay… this way._

_You think I prefer the cat?_

_I think… I thought… You **know** the cat. Which is ridiculous. You don’t know me._

_Why didn’t you shift the first time?_

_I didn’t know how to control it._

Allison shook her head and smiled bitterly, _All this time? You didn’t know all this time?_

_It got harder and harder. How could I explain what I didn’t know?_

_You could have **tried**._

_Hey. Save your judgement for someone else. You grew up safe. Knowing who and what you are. I was **alone** and then I woke up a cougar and was missing time! I don’t…_ Lydia winced, _I don’t like not knowing, not understanding. I don’t like not being in control._

_You left me in the dark. You should have told me._

_Well I’m telling you **now**_ , Lydia’s eyes flashed. 

_You’re holding something back. You aren’t telling me something._

_I’ve told you everything._

_No._ Allison’s curls danced. _No you aren’t._

_You want me to just trust you? You haven’t told me anything! Why were you comfortable playing hide-and-seek with a wild animal? Do you have a crazy death wish? Allison, I may be holding back but I’m giving a lot more than you are right now._

Allison tapped her fingers on the table and looked out the window at the parking lot. Stiles seemed to be in a thumb-wrestling war with a tall, skinny boy with dark hair as Clary shouted and giggled at them from the ground, a sketchpad on her lap. _I thought you were my familiar._

_Like a witch’s familiar?_

_Yeah. Mom and grams had one. Clary and Dawn have one and I… I really wanted to believe that you… that I …_

_Do all witches have them?_

_All Rosse’s do._ Allison brushed back a tear. _Except me, apparently._ She laughed and it was wet and sad. _Oh well._

_I’m so sorry I wasn’t what you thought I was._

Allison shrugged, _It’s stupid anyway._

_It’s not._

_Eat your pancakes. They really are the best in the tri-county area._

The large group of teens passed them as they were eating, a couple noticing Allison and pausing to say hello and tease her for graduating a year early. Outside, Clary was clinging to Stiles’ back and brandishing a scrawny tree branch as a sword, bellowing at the boy that must be Simon like a regal queen. She waved gaily to the group as they passed on their way to their cars, calling them over to join in her sport. A small girl with dark curly hair launched herself onto Simon’s back and someone got her a branch of her own to wield. When the sword fight turned to jousting, Lydia giggled through her pancakes. At least Stiles was having a good time.

She looked over at Allison, who was smiling out at her sister and her friends, her face soft for the first time since seeing Lydia on her porch.

 _I fell in love with a girl in a dream,_ Lydia shrugged at Allison’s questioning eyes. _I fell in love with a girl in a dream and it scared the hell out of me. Because I don’t know her at all and what if she didn’t want me?_

Clary screamed in triumph, her foes on the ground in a tangled heap, Stiles spinning them around and around. 

_I fell in love with a girl in a dream and that’s **crazy**._ Lydia looked out the window and smiled. _I left because I was afraid. I came back because I’m not a coward. And I will not let this crazy thing that’s happening to me run my life._

Outside, a gust of wind blew a few loose leaves out of the trees and tossed them into the air. 

 

 

For two weeks, Lydia met Allison in that diner and over pancakes (or waffles or ‘crepes’ or French toast) they talked about pretty much nothing at all. Outside, the leaves deepened into dark reds and oranges and yellows, the entire world alight like fire. Stiles became King of Clary’s world, clearly disconcerting poor little Simon, and kept her occupied while the rest of them pretended that this wasn’t the strangest courtship that had ever transpired. 

Stiles teased them that maybe Tristan and Isolde had a harder time of it, maybe and then began quoting passages in Middle English until Clary tackled him and dragged him back outside into the wind and the turning season. For all that they were sitting in that booth pretending that time wasn’t passing them by, that they didn’t have much time left, the landscape just over the rims of their coffee mugs told them differently. 

Two weeks where nothing much happened at all. They didn’t discuss witchcraft or magic or mountain lions or archery. Allison talked about being a gymnast when she was younger. Lydia told her about being prom queen. Allison shared her favorite quote and Lydia showed her blurry images on her phone of her favorite pieces of art. 

They all agreed to give them some time, to let them adjust. But Lydia couldn’t help but feel as though they were racing against the tide. 

Outside, the wind carried the season by their window. Always flowing, always shifting; the colors a riot to Lydia’s senses. The growing coolness seemingly a potent of something they weren’t ready for. 

 

 

_September 17, 1992_  
My precious Dawn,  
Next week is your first birthday. I wish I could apologize for not being there, but I’m afraid by the time you are old enough to understand this letter, I will have missed far too many birthdays for it to matter much anymore. I haven’t seen you in a long time – longer than I intended. But today! Today is a very special day, my darling. Today I learned that you will soon have a little sister to play with and learn with and protect. (Her father thinks I am silly to know so early that she is a girl. But I know.)  
Your father and grandmother will watch over you while I am gone. I promise to hold you in my arms soon.  
I hope we read this letter together someday, with your sister in my lap and you at my arm in your grandmother’s cozy kitchen. I know you are too young to promise such a thing, but please promise me to always **hope** , even if everything is telling you to give up. Always hope that it can get better.  
Peter, he says that it is foolish to write letters to a baby still in her cradle. Says I will not see you grow old, so it doesn’t matter what wild imaginings I have in my head. But I can **hope** , darling. And so I will continue to do so. Until there is nothing left. I will hope. 

_See you soon,  
Mom. _

_December 20, 1992_  
My precious Dawn,  
I love you so much. I’m so sorry to miss Winter Solstice with you and your grandmother. I will be home soon, I promise. 

_Mom_

_February 3, 1993_  
Mom,  
Peter and I are on our way home. We’ll part ways in … well. He won’t be coming back with me, that’s the important thing. He says this was only the beginning. I hope we did the right thing, mom. I’m terrified for my girls. Nothing we do can keep them safe, just delay the inevitable.  
I know you are angry with me, for Dawn, for her father, for leaving her with you when she was so young. I’m sorry for not being the daughter you wanted. The pacifist greenthumb who would ignore the signs. I understand, mother, because that’s all I want for my girls, now. I want nothing more than for this danger to pass and to never have felt this ache of fear for their safety.  
I’ll be home soon, mother.  
I love you,  
Rebecca 

_March 20, 1994_  
Allison my silver girl,  
You were born yesterday and are just now sleeping beside me in your crib. Dawn will snuggle closer to you when you begin to reach out or whimper.  
You will both be strong, you will soon have no need for me.  
I love that about you. I hate that about you. I wish you were normal daughters, sickly and fussy and in need of my constant care. In the few short hours since you drew your first breath, you have already proven that I need you far more than you will ever need me.  
What do I know? I’ve been a mother just over a year and left for most of that time to fight a war that your father said was necessary. Maybe you will need me someday, but I know I won’t be there.  
I’m sorry for that.  
Remember that you have the strength you need and that your sister will reach out her hand when you need it.  
That’s all I can offer you, my special silver girl.  
Love,  
Mom 

_June 17, 1994_  
Allison my silver girl,  
You are every day a living reminder of the father that you shouldn’t have. You have his smile, his humor, his spirit. “Mom,” you will say, laughing at me as you read this. “I was only two months old when you wrote this, how can you know?” Because I can see you.  
Someday there will be another who will see everything you can be, just as I can. Just as Peter can. And you will turn them away in fear.  
I won’t be there to hold your hand. And you are so like Peter, you will be so stubborn.  
Listen to your heart, little one. You will overestimate your own strength and fall.  
I’m sorry to be so cryptic, I wish I could give you more but… maybe one day. Listen for my words in your ear, they will come.  
Love,  
Mom 

_June 20, 1994_  
Rebecca, I received your message. You should not tax yourself so over such a silly thing. It is better that I stay away. Let your husband be the father that I cannot. I can only ensure your safety if I stay away.  
Peter  
ps – I should not, and yet I do. I cannot, and yet it is all I can do. Dream of me and I will hold you there 

_August 29, 1994_  
Rebecca, do not be foolish. I should not have to resort to such ridiculous means to contact you. Standard mail is so ridiculously unreliable. Do not come. I will take care of it.  
Peter 

_May 13, 1995_  
Rebecca,  
It is done.  
Peter  
ps – do not dream, wait until it is safe 

 

 

A week of breakfast dates passed, blowing by like a reckless windstorm. Dawn feared what would be left in the wake of this, this not-talking, not-saying, not-knowing. There was only one direction to go in the aftermath of this and it wasn’t anywhere they were willing to go. The house was littered with Clary’s drawings, strange rune designs and twisting wards. Something was coming, but Dawn couldn’t help feeling it had been there all along, under the floorboards, tucked away beneath their beds where they were unwilling to look.

Messages whispered on the winds tugged at her hair and her memory, waiting impatiently for someone to take note. 

And this time, if they chose not to listen, things were going to get a whole lot messier than a teenage girl turning into a mountain lion. 

Which was a fucked up gage of relativity. 

 

 

_August 3, 1998_  
My darling girls,  
Your sister is going to be here any day now and I feel like I need to prepare you somehow, for what’s to come, so that you can help her. But you are too young still. So innocent, always.  
Peter says that you will be given much help when you need it, but I fear it will be hardest for your sister. Dawn, already you are such a treasure. Your greenthumb gives your grandmother so much pleasure and hope. You are gentle and kind and … so silly and cute. Allison, you are special. Not just to me, but to the world and to your father. I am sorry you will never meet him. You are strong and I see you lead your elder sister with a confidence that gives me so much hope. You will need it.  
Care for your sister, girls. She will need your kindness and your strength.  
Care for each other. You are strongest together.  
I love you so much,  
Mom 

_August 15, 1998_  
Rebecca,  
Congratulations are in order, I suspect.  
Please do not seek me out. I will find you when the time is right.  
The winds are blowing.  
Peter  
ps – I am sorry 

_January 23, 2003_  
My darling girls,  
I love you so much.  
I suspect you will doubt that shortly. I am sorry for that. I must leave. I will tell you it is to protect you and you will resent that. In truth, it is not to protect you. It is because I am not strong enough to do what must truly be done, and you are too young to do it in my stead.  
Let me be to you as an ancient god, let me tie up the storm into a magical bag to be opened only when you are ready to bend or fight the winds as you see fit. Let you resent me, let you judge me, let you hate me. Let me fight in your name the only way I know how.  
Peter says I was always meant to be a mother but never meant to be yours. As much as I want to fight him and stay tucked away with you forever, I cannot. It is not in my nature. I will not apologize for that. Peter says a lot of nonsense; I think you would all love to tease him for his ridiculously stiff upper lip. You will never meet him. For that, I am glad. There are some things that parents must keep from their children.  
Goodbye,  
Mom 

_January 23, 2003_  
Mother,  
In my dream, it was time. And Peter agrees.  
We have talked about this before. I’m sorry for leaving in the middle of the night – but we both know you would have tried to talk me out of it. Tell… tell the girls I will be home as soon as I can. I can wish. You can pray to your goddess. And they can hope.  
Mother, is it true that we cannot fight destiny? If so, how did Allison come to be? Am I chasing a path already laid out for me, or am I forging a new one?  
Mother… Take care of my girls. When they are old enough to understand, please… help them remember me.  
Your loving daughter, Rebecca 

_[never opened]_  
January 23, 2003  
Kris  
I love you very much. I always have and I always will… but I have to leave. Mother does not know where, so don’t ask. And yes, I am with Allison’s father – for that, I’m sorry.  
Our daughters are the two most precious gifts you could have ever given me, and I will cherish them in my heart every day of my life. I love you.  
I’m so sorry.  
Rebecca 

 

Clary is always drawing. There is never a moment when she doesn’t have a pencil in her hand, smooth lines appearing on what was once empty. Sometimes, her hands trace lines and it is less like she is making something new and more like exposing something that was already there. Like she should have already seen it. Like she knew it all along. 

The pictures came to her unbidden, sometimes surprising her as she flipped back through her notepad. 

She tried once to stop altogether; put her pencils and papers far away, push it all away. She told herself that she only started drawing again because she wanted to (and not because she woke up to the image of an eye scratched into her arm). 

She never mentioned to her sisters that Lydia’s face had been littered through her books for years. They didn’t touch her things without her permission. 

And the night the girl with burning eyes appeared on their porch she burned every image there was. (She missed the one of a wildcat lying on a rock under the sun. She never thought to put the two things together. She never thought one sketch of a cat drawn without seeing would be something she’d need to hide.)

 

 

_September 26, 2004_  
Dawn,  
I had truly hoped to be home by now. To hold you in my arms and see your smiling face and your skinned knees… I won’t be back, I think. Peter tells me that’s how it has to be, but I have so much to tell you, so much to prepare you for.  
Take care of your sisters,  
Mom 

_December 13, 2004_  
My darling girls,  
I hope you are well! Peter and I are constantly on the move these days, sight-seeing and adventuring. Last month I went ziplining for the first time and screamed my head off. Someday I will bring you here, feed you this delicious food and swim with you in the ocean.  
I love you,  
Mom 

_May 30, 2005_  
My darling girls,  
Lean on each other while I am gone. I’m sorry that I have missed so much. I’m trying to keep you safe. I promise I will keep you safe as long as I can.  
Love,  
Mom 

_November 23, 2006_  
Mother,  
Here’s a little money to take the girls on vacation or buy them new school clothes. Peter is looking into setting up a college fund for them but, it’s hard to find the right channels. I can’t have anyone tracing them through us. I won’t be in contact for a while.  
Love,  
Rebecca 

_February 12, 2008_  
Allison,  
I have tried so hard, in my letters and presents, never to set you apart from the others. You are all three special, essential women to the world. You are all _important_.  
But Allison, there is something so essential to you, to your existence… I’m sorry that I cannot tell you the truth of who you are, you must discover that for yourself. Dawn has a way with books, her earth magic will guide you. And someone else. Someone soon. You won’t want to trust them, but please let yourself be vulnerable. My proud, brave girl. You are so strong. Too strong for your own good. Once I caught you in the backyard, you’d sprained your wrist and were willing yourself not to cry. You were only five years old. Find someone to hold your hand, my darling. Find a way to let someone else be strong with you.  
I love you. Everything I have done has been for you and your sisters.  
Mom 

 

 

Two weeks of diner breakfasts that had Allison’s dimples showing even after a long day at work and Dawn had almost forgotten the reason for the girl with copper hair that was sinking her self into Allison’s life. 

She was out in the garden, autumn was beginning to turn into winter, but that was no excuse not to check in with her plants, with the earth, with their home. In a clump of grass she found an old key. Her sisters teased her when she told them that the flowers and her herbs whispered in her ear. That day, she didn’t stop to find them and explain to them that a pumpkin had told her a secret. 

She just took it. 

Walked up the stairs to her room – her mother’s old room – went to the old trunk at the foot of her bed, and unlocked it for the first time since her mother’s disappearance so long ago. 

And found more questions than answers. 

 

 

_December 30, 2010_  
Dawn,  
I hid the key in your garden. It will find you when you are ready. Look in the grimoire. I know you girls have decided to swear off magic, but you may find that you have no other choice.  
The girl looking for Allison – trust her. I told your mother not to trust Peter and fighting against me cost too much.  
Love,  
Grams 


	4. winter (fire)

Lydia watched autumn slip by behind a counter filling coffee orders and writing papers on the _Rise and Fall of Christendom_ for the class Dawn forced her to enroll in. Between steaming milk, avoiding flirtatious regulars, and memorizing innocuous dates, Lydia spent most of her spare time pouring over the ‘Rebecca Letters’ and unsuccessfully attempting to turn herself back into a cougar. 

She hadn’t been able to shift back into her wild form since the night she arrived on the Rosse’s doorstep, which was both frustrating and terrifying. Try as she might, she seemed determinedly stuck as an ordinary human girl.

Stiles had made this his main priority, collecting articles that read more like bad fanfiction, which were stacked in haphazard piles all over Clary’s room. He seemed to be the only one capable of getting a response from her these days, her obvious hostility towards her sisters’ pursuits of the missing family grimoire. 

Despite being surrounded by people to the point where she felt as though she was practically tripping over them every day, though truth be told between the lurking cats and Dawn’s predilection for curling up with a book in the strangest floor-spaces she’d earned a few bruised shins she’d taken as a result of the falls she’d suffered, she couldn’t help feeling a bit lonely. Sitting at her desk in the cramped spare room alone, pouring over letters from a dead woman. 

They all had their projects, had chosen a team to play on.

And once again, she was a team of _one_.

 

Autumn passed and in that time the five of them fell into a rhythm. Sunday pancakes at Stiles’ diner, game night on Thursdays, Dawn’s softball league on Tuesdays, PTA bake sales and Homecoming and a student art show for Clary. Autumn passed by with a whisper – holding nothing and no one accountable, least of all itself.

Autumn passed and every day Lydia looked out at the wind and expected change, but instead saw only red, orange, and yellow leaves tossed about. It was more of a mocking reminder of her life up to that point than a signal of things to come. 

 

Through some sort of unspoken agreement, Lydia and Stiles went home for Thanksgiving, and after only three days Lydia was back in the spare room at the Rosse home, her eyes a little red, but otherwise the same studious Lydia, pouring over slips of paper as if they carried the weight of her whole world. No one asked why Stiles didn’t return with her.

And Clary signed up for the women’s field hockey team at school after several strongly worded emails passed between Dawn and the school’s guidance counselor about her anger issues.

 

A week after Thanksgiving, Allison came home to find Dawn and Clary glaring daggers at her from the living room. The two of them were never very good at being sneaky or even subtle – especially when they were working together. Regardless of Clary’s general boycott on all things Rosse-sisters, Allison had already figured out that the two of them had pulled their funds to buy her an antique crossbow for Christmas. She also knew that they were completely stumped on what to get Lydia but were also too terrified of her reaction to ask Allison for advice.

And yet, here they were, with their _we need to talk_ faces on – that were so terribly similar and everyone was still dancing around the reasons why – and she felt like she’d been slammed into a tidal wave. 

“This – whatever this is – has to wait until tomorrow,” she said wearily as she leaned against the door and pulled her purse over her head to hang on the rack by the door. “Unless it’s that you’ve both relented on the no meat thing and there’s going to be cheeseburgers for dinner tonight, because I’m starved.”

Her sister gave each other _you first_ glances and the movement – which had her whole delighted her in the way that only sisters who understood each other’s very movements could understand – suddenly made her feel nauseous and her skin crawl.

No one had said it – hell, Clary’s stubbornness had nearly masked it – but she felt it in every glance they gave her, every benign conversation about carpooling and homework - **_she wasn’t their sister_**. 

All their scrying and spellwork and digging through attic boxes was a pursuit for the answer to the question no one was willing to ask: _Why?_

Why had their mother – barely twenty years old and with a newborn baby still in her crib – why did she take off with some stranger?

Why had she had a child with him?

And why did she leave with him a second time?

All these years, mom leaving had been the cause of a foreign interloper – someone or something had dragged her away from them. Now it was clear that she had run away from the daughter she shouldn’t have ever born and right into the arms of the man who caused it all. 

The interloper was Allison. She was somehow both the result and the cause of their mother’s streak of running away. Like a viper in the nest, just waiting to strike and tear them apart. 

Allison swallowed her nausea and pushed away from the door, grabbing her bag, “On second thought, I’ll eat out. I want to catch Faith’s class tonight anyway.”

Dawn closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the front door clicking closed and Allison’s car engine turn over in the driveway. Clary’s feet on the stairs back into the kitchen and her mountain of paperwork. Lydia’s soft music drifting down from the attic room. Bo purring and rubbing against her legs. 

Truth was, Stiles and Lydia moving into the guest room made the house feel like a home again. More like it was before grams passed. Even with Clary’s sulky silences, it still felt better than not. Their mother’s letter raised more questions than answers, Lydia and Allison were still keeping each other at arm’s length, and hell… she was basically running a halfway home for teenage runaways. Stiles’ absence was a blow in the sense that now they didn’t have someone in the middle giving them an excuse to not speak to each other. 

Dawn had secretly taken up an affair with her boss. Which was either a result of stress or the end result of three years arguing and bantering with a hottie who hated her husband. Dawn didn’t really care which and rationalized that she was far too young for either reason to say much about her character, so she was determined not to let it bother her too much. 

“Come on, baby. Want to help me with dinner?”

“By _help_ do you mean sit at the kitchen table and mock you while I do homework?”

“I’ll even let you pick the music.”

Clary closed her eyes and held her hands together in prayer, “Anything but _Fall Out Boy_.”

 

Faith’s small gym catered to moms who wanted something more exciting than pilates to drop pregnancy pounds, girls who were kicked out of Miss Trina’s Pink Tutus for being too-aggressive and sent here by concerned parents, a handful of girls from the high school and tiny community college with haunted eyes, and Allison. 

Faith was a petite brunette in her late 20’s with military awards in her office and a framed ‘AA’ in physical education. Allison still wasn’t sure how she ended up in their small town – the one time she asked Faith had laughed tonelessly and said, “It was either here or hell.” A statement Allison tried not to take too literally. 

She’d stumbled into Faith’s studio two weeks after grams had died. She did three classes in a row without Faith saying anything and then beat into one of the heaviest punching bags for an extra thirty minutes – turning around to find the gym empty and Faith sitting cross-legged near the wall of mirrors (still with their old barre from that one upstart who tried to compete against Miss Trina) with a cigarette in her mouth. 

“Jesus, kid. Did somebody die?”

“My grandmother.”

Faith nodded and sucked on her cigarette, “Cancer?” Allison just stared, pacing back and forth, drenched in sweat. “In my experience, that kind of anger is fueled by two things: violent death, or disease. Things that can’t be stopped.”

“It was maybe both.”

“A murderer with cancert bullets instead of the regular thing. Gotcha.”

Allison cracked a smile. 

“So what are you going to do about it? Kill yourself?

“I just…” Allison squared her shoulders and said the thing she couldn’t say aloud to her sisters. “I don’t want to ever feel helpless again.”

Faith studied her for a minute, “Well I think you’re better off getting a medical degree, but as long as you promise never to pull a stunt like tonight’s again, I might be able to help you get where you are headed.”

Which basically meant Allison had free reign of the place as long as she came for a private session once a week and helped out with the 6-10 range whenever she could, which was a bit like herding cats only afterwards Faith offered her a beer and the moms sometimes brought them dinner. 

In the madness of her familiar actually being a girl and her mother’s letters being found, Allison’s training had petered off. She still came to the kid’s class to help out – dragging Stiles and Clary along to play punching bag – only to leave in the whirl of mothers and fathers coming to pick up their offspring. She wasn’t avoiding Faith so much as she was avoiding the whole concept of being in the place where she found solace. 

If there was one thing Allison had been avoiding the past three months, it was comfort. She didn’t want to feel powerful or courageous or strong or healthy… she was perfectly happy feeling miserable. She didn’t want to adjust or play fair or hell, be self-aware at all. 

Except looking across the room at her sister’s faces and feeling that pit of anger rising up, threatening to shoot bitterness out, well that was as much of a wake-up call as Allison was ever going to need. 

She nodded to Faith and stepped into the back of the Beginner’s class and went through the simple movements she had long ago mastered, allowing the breath and action take over, letting her spinning mind finally flow. 

After class, Faith handed her a plastic cup of water and sat next to her on the floor, their backs against the long mirror and their legs spread out in front of them, and no one else in sight to see her cry.

 

 

“Wait. What do you mean she’s at faith’s gym? Is that some kind of code for _found Jesus while jogging_?”

Dawn shook her head and grinned at her – it was her day to cook which meant a casserole was currently defrosting in case her new experiment went awry. From what Lydia could tell, Dawn’s food adventures had about a ten-percent likelihood of success. “Not _faith’s gym_ \- Faith’s gym. Faith is a person. She teaches kickboxing or something.”

“Didn’t you notice she’s gone all the time now?” Clary didn’t bother to look up from her Geometry homework at the kitchen table. 

“Also,” Dawn sprinkled some pepperjack cheese on what looked like a fruit salad, “Stiles went there a few times, I’m surprised he’s never mentioned it.”

“Stiles went to a kickboxing gym?”

“Stiles went to an all-female gym. Aside from Simon, he’s the only male over the age of ten Faith’s ever allowed on the premises. She makes dads wait outside when they come at pick-up time.”

Lydia felt slightly ambushed and blushed, “I guess I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

Dawn began stuffing what looked like raw pita pockets with her strange concoction, “We understand.”

Clary hugged at the table behind them, but didn’t say anything.

“Will she be there long?”

“Kickboxing is like Allison’s form of yoga, so usually there’s really no telling. But it’s Thursday and she never forgets about game night.”

Lydia winced. The last few weeks, she’d avoided game night, not entirely willing to see if Stiles was right and she was depending on him rather than attempting to form her own relationships with the Rosse sisters. 

"Well I guess I’ll just tell you then and she can find out when she gets home.”

“Find out what?” Clary’s voice held an unrestrained threat in it.

“Stiles is on his way, he says he has something to tell us, and it had to be in person.”

 

Stiles was waiting in the parking lot when Allison finally stepped out into the crisp winter air. A light snow was falling – the first of the season – and she hoped it stuck so that Clary would have a white Christmas. The Rosse family had never been the tree-decorating, lights on the house, stockings on the fireplace type – until Clary. When Clary turned three, their mother brought home a tree for the first time and though grams had put up quite a bit of a fuss the first couple of years, they all thought of it as Clary’s special holiday.

“You’re back! Why didn’t you come in? Faith would have loved to say hello!”

She was beaming, her breath coming out in little bursts of steam, her long hair curling out from where she had shoved it in her knitted cap, her boots lightly tapping on the pavement. 

His nose was red from waiting in the cold and his eyes gleamed with … mischief, maybe.

She stopped in front of him and opened her mouth to say something about the snow when he narrowed his eyes and said, “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

Allison shook her head and turned towards her car, pulling her keys out of her low-hung purse. “If you came all the way back here to interrogate me, then you can walk back.” She threw her small duffel bag into the trunk and slammed the lid down. 

“I wasn’t asking, I was telling. You are – I know you are, I see the way you look at her.”

Allison’s shoulders tightened. For a minute, she stood silently at her car door, her back to him. And then she said so softly he nearly didn’t hear, “So what?”

“So what?!” he went around to the passenger’s side so he could glare at her over the roof of the car. “That’s the best you got?!”

“Yeah, that’s it. So what? So it doesn’t change anything, so she was still forced into this by magic or the Universe or whatever, so she still lied to me—“

“So you’re lying to her now as payback, is that it?”

“No!” she shouted and then looked down at her hands. “No,” she said – more softly this time, “it’s not payback. I understand why she lied. But she should still have the chance to leave.”

“Isn’t not telling her how you feel, or at least giving it a shot, taking her choice away from her again?”

“We tried that, remember? We tried being normal, getting to know each other slowly, and we were handed a bomb. Every time we get close, it gets more… complicated.”

Understanding dawned in Stiles’ eyes, “You don’t want her to think you’re using her for information, for more clues about your mom.”

Allison shrugged. 

He laughed, “I’m pretty sure the Universe would be able to see through any fake-dating scheme.”

“But would she?” Allison’s voice sounded broken. “Would she ever be able to trust that it was real between us?”

“But…” Stiles shook his head, “ But it’s like…”

“The deeper in we are, the more we come to learn.”

“Your logic is flawed.”

“The situation is flawed. But she deserves an out either way.”

“Don’t you _both_ deserve to be with the person you love?”

Allison’s eyes darkened as she opened her door, “I’m not sure what I deserve, but happily ever after isn’t in my cards.”

The drive back to the Rosse house was silent, Allison brooding – her good mood from class now gone – and Stiles plotting. 

Which probably had nothing to do with the circumstances, Stiles was always plotting something.

 

 

The house went into a bit of a whirlwind when they arrived. To say that the Rosse girls – who had never had a brother – spoiled Stiles, was a bit of an understatement. No other male had been privy to their secret history, aside from fuzzy memories of an oft-absent father, so when he waltzed in, knowing enough not to be seen as a threat, they took to him like cats to cream. 

The excitement wore of in only a few moments as they all remembered that he was back with important news.

“Wait!” Clary raised her hands over her head as Lydia and Allison shifted her homework off the kitchen table. “First we need to try these monstrosities Dawn calls food and decide if their edible or if we need to keep the oven hat for something else.”

They clustered around the counter as Dawn sliced the extra pocket into five. She always made one extra for taste-testing purposes. 

“Holy balls, Dawnie! This is great!” Stiles reached out to grab the piece out of Lydia’s hand but she slapped him away. “What is it?”

“Avocado, mango, sweet and red potato, garbanzo beans, bell-peppers, jalapenos, and cheese,” Dawn sighed with relief. “Yours and Alli’s have chicken in them, too.”

“You might have to make more,” Clary said through a mouthful, fanning her mouth as she had obviously taken too large of a bite and the pockets were still hot from the oven.

“Depends on whether we still have an appetite after Stiles tells us why he’s back,” Lydia said, carrying plates and a pitcher of sweet ice tea to the table. 

Stiles winked at Dawn, “More would be great if you can.”

“There’s another batch already in the oven,” she stage-whispered.

After devouring three pockets, Stiles looked at them appraisingly and said, “First off, I have to admit that I lied.” He looked at Lydia and then Clary, “Especially to you. I said that I was working on _why_ Lydia couldn’t turn back into a cougar, but I wasn’t.”

“You weren’t?” Lydia’s forehead creased. “You put on quite a show.”

“Oh, I mean I _was_ looking. I am. I still can – but I think we all know that was only a temporary thing. I kinda think it was a kick in the ass to get you to come here and since you did –” he snapped his fingers. 

“I agree,” Dawn cut in. “Or at least the garden does…”

Clary shifted uncomfortably in her seat, but Stiles grabbed her hand, “Alright kiddo, no more magic at the dinner table, right?” He nodded at her and she went back to nibbling at her pocket.

“It occurred to me that the magic route wasn’t giving us any solid answers, so I dug around the human way.”

“You dug up bodies?!” Clary looked down at the hand he was holding like she might have to cut it off.

“In a manner of speaking,” he turned his attention to Dawn. “I googled the hell out of your family tree. Interesting stuff. Couldn’t find your roots across the pond, but your family has been here since the early colonists. Even inter-married with Cherokee in the area awhile back. Probably French originally, but the Petersons... they were British for sure.”

“Petersons?” Allison’s stomach dropped.

“Yeah. You know how the old European royals all intermarried for years? The Rosse and the Petersons are kinda like that, every generation or so a Rosse and a Peterson get married, have babies.” He took a drink of tea and then leaned in, elbows on the table. “If you look at a family tree like a straight arrow, you could almost miss it, but build it from the roots up follow every thread – and yeah, the pattern is there. Nothing anyone would notice if you weren’t looking for it.”

“What made you look for it?” Lydia croaked out. 

Stiles shook his head, “There was something about those letters, about Peter.”

Allison sought Dawn’s gaze across the table, yearning to apologize even if she didn’t know what for. 

“And then I got it into my head that while no one would call their kid Peter Peterson, maybe a woman would change the name of her lover from Mr. Peters to just _Peter_ as a joke or a clue.”

“So is he a Peterson?”

Stiles shook his head, “Damned if I know, around the twenties, Petersons fall out of the Rosse tree and off the face of the planet. It _looks_ like they all died out.”

“Or someone wants it to _look_ like they all died out,” Lydia looked up, surprised to hear Clary give voice to the thing they didn’t want to admit. That there was something sinister lurking under this story. 

“Well that brings me to Lydia’s paternity test—”

“My **_WHAT_**?!”

“Her… why???”

Stiles held up his hands in surrender, “It makes sense, okay? Just hear me out to the end.”

Behind him, the oven chirped and Dawn stood up, “Keep going, I’ll be able to hear you.”

“So Peter has dreams about your mom and Lydia has dreams about Allison. I had to rule out that he was… _your_ dad.” Allison’s face when white and Lydia’s turned the color of a ripe tomato. “It was one of my crazier theories. Which was totally fueled by your mom lying you birth certificate,” he pointed at Allison. “We all know Peter is your dad, but your birth certificate was signed by Kris. Same as your sisters’. Which pretty much left me with a profound sense of distrust.”

Lydia cut in, “Skip ahead to you doing a paternity test. I assume my birth certificate has my parents on it?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t trust it. I had to go home to figure it all out.”

“I wasn’t adopted, then.” Lydia didn’t really know how to feel about that exactly. It wasn’t relief and after everything that happened, it wasn’t a surprise either. 

“Both of your parents check out. You are 100% Martin. Which isn’t all that bad, actually. You guys got up to some hinky stuff in Iceland a while back but otherwise—”

“Otherwise no witches,” Clary said slowly. 

Stiles shrugged, “I couldn’t find the same kind of pattern like with the Rosse history. But I don’t know _who_ I’m looking for, just _what_. And that makes it hard.” He took a deep breath, “You are the very _last_ of the Rosse line. Some far-flung relations here and there but…”

“So where does that leave us?” Dawn rested her hand on the back of Stiles’ chair. 

“Ah, this is my favorite part,” when he smiled, Allison felt a strong desire to run out of the room as fast as she could. “Allison and Lydia aren’t sisters – I even ruled out Mr. Martin being Peter, never ask me to explain that – but they _are_ connected. Every time they get closer, we get another glimpse at the truth.”

Dawn smirked, “Too bad they’re both too stubborn to admit they totally fell for each other.”

Clary groaned, “If this being solved hangs on them having to make declarations to each other, we’re doomed.”

Stiles laughed and stood up, yanking Clary out of her chair, “Come on. I’ll teach you how to play poker.”

“Puh-lease amateur. I’ll teach _you_ how to lose at poker.”

Dawn rolled her eyes at them and then pointed at the two girls sitting at the table, “Don’t even think about joining game night until the kitchen is spotless.”

By the time Allison had recovered from the emotional whiplash of the dinner conversation, Lydia had already cleared the table and was up to her elbows in warm suds. Allison worked on cleaning off the counter and table - putting Dawn’s scattered ingredients and utensils away as Lydia washed and dried the dishes. 

She was putting away the broom in the pantry when Lydia said in a choked voice, “I already told you that I love you so if you’re waiting for me to—”

But Allison never heard what she was supposed to be waiting for because she had already gathered up Lydia in her arms and had nipped her nose playfully, stopping Lydia’s words in their tracks. 

She pressed her forehead to Lydia’s, “You should still get out, run away while you still can.”

Lydia laughed brokenly, “Come with me.”

“Leave, Lydia. This is _crazy_. Dreams and lions and witches? This isn’t a life.”

Lydia kissed Allison softly, her lips warm and soft, “Wild cougars couldn’t chase me away.”

“I’d like to see them try.”

Clary’s voice interrupted them, “I’m seriously going to implement a no kissing in the kitchen rule because _gross_ , goddess save my appetite. Also get your asses in here, it’s time for [](%E2%80%9D)Huggermugger and I can’t beat Dawn without your help.” As an afterthought she threw over her shoulder, “Allison, you’ve got Stiles. I’d pity you more if I wasn’t worried that you making out with my teammate might make her lose her edge.”

Clary needn’t have worried, even with their legs tangled up in each other’s, Lydia still chased Dawn around the board – and nearly won. Clary smashed them all in _Disney Trivial Pursuit_ , _Settlers of Catan_ came down to a battle between Stiles and Dawn, and Allison won _Clue_ in three moves like always.

There was a lot to discuss and learn, they were nowhere near the edge of the woods yet – with their budding relationship or with the current magic dilemma that was their lives – but sitting in front of the fire with Lydia pressed against her side, their makeshift family laughing around them and snow falling gently outside – it almost felt like maybe they didn’t need to wait for the other shoe to drop. Maybe it wasn’t coming. 

Allison briefly imagined magical Easter eggs popping up all over the house – after their first fight, after second base, after their first real date (which she really should plan) – roadmaps sending up little flares to the others over the status of their relationship. Like the flowers spilling everyone’s secrets to Dawn only on a more epically embarrassing scale. She laughed and teased with the others and squeezed Lydia’s hand when she looked over at her worriedly. 

Okay, so they had a lot more to deal with than any normal relationship should … but they’d get through it. 

They had to. 

Let the shoes fall where they may.

 

Upstairs, beneath a pile of Clary’s sketchpads, a small notebook with teenage scrawl covering it’s pages and the name _Rebecca_ embossed on the cover appeared. While one sister waited for the world to come crashing down and another held back her suspicions to watch silently, the third started down a very dangerous path of keeping secrets.


End file.
